


Temporal Dissonance

by Meskeet



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Families of Choice, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Insurgence Tie In, Pre-Fall of Overwatch, Uprising Comic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 14:28:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10595913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meskeet/pseuds/Meskeet
Summary: Lena isn’t sure how long she spent in the Slipstream, but every bump and jolt is catching up to her at a rate even she can’t outrun. There’s bruises where her flight jacket used to be, ribbons of mottled colors in cool shades that feel like fire under her skin, dogging each movement she tries to take.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! This is a preface to the new comic, Uprising (and the event tomorrow! Yay!) and it takes place just after Lena receives her chronal accelerator from Winston.

The first thing Lena does when she gets her quarters is ask Athena for the date.

It doesn’t make her feel any better, the first time, so she asks Athena again. Then again and again and again, again Lena’s blinks and she’s against the wall, knees pull tight to her chest. It doesn’t make her feel any better to hear the words a hundred times, even as the room remains stable around her. She waits, watching the single flower someone had put in a vase, glancing away and then glancing back, expecting it to be wilted or gone each time she returns her gaze to it.

Everything is a steady constant. The light’s a calm white, not a flicker in sight. There’s a desk and a chair, a monitor where Tracer can see the default background is set to Overwatch’s logo. Even as she glances at it, the clock in the corner clicks and another minute passes by. Every second is paced at even intervals, time never faltering in its steady progression.

She blinks to the other side of the room and blinks back, just as quickly. She doesn’t lose a single moment.

Lena waits for her guard to drop, for her hands to start shaking as her mind accepts the rhythm of time around her – but she stays a frantic ball of energy, moving from one corner to another, as though enough blinks will shake her loose from her anchor. Maybe she can do this forever, small blinks back and forth, quick enough and insignificant enough that she can ignore any ticks of the second hand that pass by without her noticing.

Her uniform comes off in pieces and she takes off her shoes, one by one. It takes three tries to undo the clasps on her harness. It doesn’t matter how many times Winston assured her that she’ll be safe – the weight’s not so much an albatross as a life preserver around her neck, and she’s worried she’s forgotten how to swim.

She twitches and turns it into a blink, leaning her weight on her elbows and letting the door prop her up. Her head tips forward onto the cool metal and she takes a deep breath, holding it.

As she exhales, she yanks the harness off. It gets tangled in her hair for a moment – she’ll need to cut it again, it’s started to grow faster than she would’ve expected, maybe it’s making up for the lost time – and keeps going. The accelerator’s placed reverently on her chair, but everything else is strewn around, dropped wherever she happens to be and not even kicked out of her way. Ziegler’d be glad she changed out of the clothes she’s been in since the accident, would laugh and tell her that an eternity’s worth of sweat doesn’t smell any better than an hour's and that a shower would do her a world of good.

She follows Angela’s orders, even if the doc isn’t here to give them. Lena laughs because she could blink over now, could get in the water and have another version of herself in the medical bay at the same time. It’s not funny, and she doesn’t even know she’s shaking again until she drops her holsters for the third time in a row. Now that she’s stopping moving, every shift just adds a new ache to the haze that’s her head. Lena isn’t sure how long she spent in the Slipstream, but every bump and jolt is catching up to her at a rate she can’t outrun. There’s bruises where her flight jacket used to be, ribbons of mottled colors in cool shades that feel like fire under her skin, dogging each movement she tries to take.

The shower’s possibly the worst decision she’s ever made. It’s confined, and she can’t blink in and out as she pleases. It’s hard to keep an eye on the accelerator when she wants to scrub every bit of evidence of the passing of time from her skin. It’s a futile effort. She’s already lost herself once. Lena blinks once. Hits the wall, doesn’t blink again. She has to stop moving eventually, but even once her feet stop moving her hands keep twitching. 

_In and out, darling._

Lena isn’t quite sure where the dirt swiftly turning into mud came from – the slipstream had kept her fractured, moving from time to place and back again. It had been a special type of vertigo, one where she’d start to find her feet and then the rug wouldn’t just be pulled from under her, but cease to exist entirely. She teeters a bit even now and braces herself against the shower door she half expects will disappear.

A trail of water follows her as she yanks on the set of clothes she can find. Lena hesitates, then the harness settles right back into place where it belongs, the now familiar weight steadying her shaking at long last.

_Just in case_ , she tells herself. _Never know what might happen, Lena,_ she tries to add, even though she’s all too aware exactly what _can_ happen.

That’s the problem right there.

She just needs some time, that’s all. Time, at least, is something she will have to spare nowadays.

Winston comes before she can convince herself that she’s back to being okay, a hulking shadow in the doorway as reassuring as he is intimidating. Winston’s… _kind_ , there’s no other way to explain it, and it’s the unexpected warmth of his presence that makes her sink into her standard issue chair with a sigh.  He frowns at her, making his way carefully across the room with a grace at odd with his size.  He looks at the accelerator, a glance just brief enough to avoid becoming a pointed stare in a way that can’t be anything but deliberate.

“When I first arrived from the Lunar Colony, it was a relief to be among people. Then I found myself looking for solitude, and I was angry at myself.”

He settles down after his overture, close enough that she wants to reach out to touch but far enough away that she doesn’t quite feel crowded. With the exception of the few first, frantic moments when she’d opened her eyes and found herself grounded in the present, no one’s looked at her like they expect her to stick around for very long at all. Winston, however, treats her with a familiarity that says she's been here forever even if she's spent the past few days hiding, first in the infirmary, then in her room. 

“Tracer,” her callsign is a warm curl of reassurance, a welcome change from the horrified expressions of the people she’d run into for brief, agonizing moments when time had slipped and danced away from her grasp. Winston doesn’t ask how she’s feeling, just hums for a moment as he says, “Jack thinks you’ll be ready to test by the end of the week.”

She’s not expecting the thrill of excitement that races through her despite her better judgement. Being confirmed as an Overwatch agent – well, it’s everything she’s wanted, isn’t it? It’s what she’s worked towards, what keeps her moving even when she closes her eyes and sees London burning, sees Overwatch in ashes, sees flickers of hope through strands of the future that she hopes desperately will come true. She hasn’t told anyone what she’s seen, if even she’s sure Jack would want to know – but it’s unfathomable that thing could get to that point, right?

Winston goes on about procedures and tests that Dr. Ziegler wants to administer before judging her field ready, slipping names she’s only ever heard as legends. Names she knows from the Slipstream, like old friends she’s lost touch with, even if they won’t have any idea who she is. Winston’s animated gestures are comforting, something she half-remembers that she will see a thousand times, a comforting memory that won’t be a memory, not for a long time.

She’d thought she’d been fine, before, right after the explosion occurred and she opened her eyes for the first time, but then she’d kept moving when the world had stopped, the whole universe a mad frenzy of different places and times and the passage time nothing more or less than a slippery poison expanding both ways. Tentatively, Lena reaches out, lets her fingers brush the solid anchor of Winston’s hand

An expression she’s not familiar with, after all the times she’s seen him, crosses his features. He moves until he’s on eye level with her, pushing his glasses ever so slightly and meeting her gaze.

“Lena,” there's that warm resonance again, wrapping around her name as the weight of a thousand shared moments give it strength. It’s a sudden realization, a comfort that makes her reel even as it hits her – she’s heard it from him countless times, even if he doesn’t know it yet, which means that no matter what she’s seen happen to Overwatch, he’ll be one of the ones there through the end - one of the few she won't lose track of, even as she flits in and out of their reality. “Your record suggests that, in your case, the testing won’t be anything more than procedure.”

“Don’t worry, love,” she says, riding that wave of realization as he covers her hand with his, reassuring, consistent, _there_ , the fluttering of his pulse a steady thrum that marks the moments steadily moving by. Winston waits, patient in a way she can never be. For the first time in days, she smiles, all teeth and energy and when she stands, it's because there's a destination in her mind now.  "I get the feeling that we have this under control.”

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to add me (meskeet#11305) on OW if you want somebody to queue with. I have a few other gen fics posted if you enjoyed this one, and comments + kudos are always appreciated!


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